Trading up: Wiltshire. The bright pink wall in the sitting room might stop you in your tracks, but be brave – this three-bed cottage in Tisbury is a beguiling means of expansion, with exposed stonework, an inglenook fireplace, wooden floors and bespoke kitchen. Said living room is of stately proportions, a shower room serves the master bedroom and there’s a detached garage at the end of a gravelled driveway. All of which is yours for £360,000.Jackson-Stops & Staff, 01747 850 858

Trading up: Hampshire. From the top floor of this £495,000 end-of-terrace you can gaze across to the estuary which borders the Georgian market town of Lymington. The kitchen is large enough to allow you to lose the dining room to a fourth bedroom, provided you don’t mind tramping through it to the conservatory. The downside is that the sitting room is a throughway – the front door opens straight into it and the stairs rise out of it – although its 32ft length is ample compensation. It’s all elegantly appointed with a floriferous garden and a garage and carport, and is a stroll away from the quaysides, marinas and railway station.John D Wood, 01590 677233

Trading down: Suffolk. This 250-year-old cottage in the village of Stanton is a fairly expansive way to shrink. £199,000 supplies you with two quaintly beamed and handsomely sized reception rooms, and if you don’t mind sleeping downstairs off the hallway, a third bedroom. You might also be able to make something of the attic room other than a repository for excess clutter, and there’s garden at the front and back. The squeeze is felt in the kitchen, reached via the sitting room and only 4.8ft wide. The fact that the nearest town – Bury St Edmunds – is 10 miles away needn’t panic you since Stanton is well supplied with shops and services.Jackson-Stops & Staff, 01284 700535

Trading down: Devon. The 1950s look in this cottage in Millbrook, near Plymouth, is deliberate, since the owner possesses retro tastes. In fact, the décor and large, old-fashioned kitchen are new, with the cooker a refurbished 50s model. A third bedroom has been sacrificed to create a grand master bedroom, but could be reinstated, and unusually for a Victorian cottage the bathroom is upstairs and of a decent size. Gardens buffer the house front and back, with the rear plot a vertiginous affair descending in three layers, while lakeside walks start across the road. It’s a short drive in either direction across the Rame Peninsula to the sea. Cost: £154,950.Marchand Petit, 01752 829000

Dream home: Northamptonshire. The Jacobeans who first inhabited this old bakehouse in Maidwell would marvel, for the Victorians expanded its ancient core while 21st-century owners have glamorised it with an en suite bathroom, an Aga-warmed kitchen and an elegantly landscaped garden. The upsetting £635,000 price tag is explained by the enormity of the place: four receptions, a library, a utility room off the kitchen, four bedrooms and a two-storey barn with a games room and office potential.Jackson-Stops & Staff, 01604 632991